Less expensive cards perform similarly. Blocks a second expansion slot. Requires one power supply connector.

Bottom Line

AMD’s Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition is priced right, but it doesn’t stand out when compared with older AMD and Nvidia video cards.

AMD isn’t yet ready to abandon its tour of the Southern Islands. Though the company released the second card in its 7000 series, the just-under-top-of-the-line Radeon HD 7950, only two weeks ago, it’s already back with a third. This one, however, is a slightly tougher sell. The Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition offers all the attractive features we’ve seen on AMD’s other cards in this generation. But, as priced at $159 (list), it does not definitively defend the space against other, older models currently floating around. You can’t do better with newly released hardware right now, but it’s too early to tell whether the 7950’s modest virtues will prove to be of major value once AMD and Nvidia have finished fleshing out their lines.

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What is clear at the moment about the 7770 (along with the less-powerful Radeon HD 7750, a member of the family seductively code-named “Cape Verde”) is that AMD has gone through all the proper motions to fit it into the 7000 series. Like both the 7950 and its highest-end predecessor, the Radeon HD 7970, it utilizes the new 28nm Graphics Core Next architecture that both uses a revised instruction set to give each compute unit the power to simultaneously execute instructions from multiple kernels and can process more instructions per clock cycle per square millimeter of GPU space. In addition, PowerTune technology intelligently monitors and adjusts each application’s power usage independently when the electrical and thermal headroom are available for doing so, and ZeroCore Power shuts down both the GPU and fan during long idle periods to reduce power usage even more. Of course the card also supports AMD’s proprietary technologies, such as Eyefinity, for easily setting up and configuring multiple monitors, and HD3D, for stereoscopic 3D.

Where the 7770 differs is in its specs, which brand it as several significant steps down from the impressive 7900-series cards. As its full name tells you, the card has a full 1GHz reference engine clock, which AMD claims is a world first. Beyond that, it also has 640 stream processors, 40 texture units, 1GB of GDDR5 memory and a 1,125MHz memory clock rate running over a 128-bit memory interface (for a memory data rate of 4.5Gbps and memory bandwidth of 72GBps), and a TDP of 80 watts. It’s significantly shorter than the previous cards, too, measuring only about 8.5 inches in length. But the 7770 is an up-ladder product in some ways: Besides the typical DVI, it also has output for HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2 (in the form of two Mini DisplayPort jacks); it requires a six-pin connection from your power supply; and its fan–heat sink assembly is big enough that you’ll need to leave an adjacent expansion slot open to house it.

As for performance, the 7770 does what it needs to do. It delivered reasonable flame rates in all our gaming tests at 1,680-by-1,050 resolution: 26.1 frames per second (fps) in Aliens vs. Predator, 42.6fps in DiRT 3, 74fps in HAWX 2, 29.9 in Just Cause 2, and 26.2fps in Lost Planet 2. (We crank details all the way up when testing, so if you relax the settings you should be able to consistently get over 30fps.) At 1,920 by 1,200 the 7770 struggled more on some games (21fps in Aliens vs. Predator, 23.9 in Just Cause 2, 23fps in Lost Planet 2), though it was still acceptable handling others (35.9 in DiRT 3, 62 in HAWX 2). You’re probably better off erring on the side of caution as far as resolution and graphics effects are concerned, but the hardware is certainly capable.

But, if you’re willing to make a few sacrifices, you can pay a bit less and get more. Both AMD’s own last-generation Radeon HD 6850 and Nvidia’s two-cycles-ago powerhouse, the GTX 460 either matched what the 7770 could do, and cost $15-$30 less on the open market. The GTX 460 only really surpassed the 7770 with Nvidia-branded games (like HAWX 2, where it earned 84fps, or Lost Planet 2, where it squeaked by with 28.4, in both cases at 1,680 by 1,050). But the 6850 topped the 7770 in every test except Lost Planet 2 (23.7fps at 1,680 by 1,050; 21.4 at 1,920 by 1,200) and version 2.5 of the Heaven Benchmark (17.1fps at 1,680 by 1,050 and 14.7fps at 1,920 by 1,200 versus 19.2fps and 15.6fps). The 7770 only picked up ground during power testing, with a full system using the card drawing 93.3 watts when idle and 155.8 watts under full load, in both cases well below what we saw with the 6850 (106.9 watts at idle, 172.2 watts at full load) and GTX 460 (97.7 watts idle, 175.9 watts at full load).

The question becomes, then: Is the AMD Radeon HD 7770 compelling enough to justify costing more? At this point, we’d have to say no, unless you’re trying to save every penny possible on electricity straight on down the line. That isn’t to say it’s a poor choice—it’s not. If $160 or so is all you have to spend, and you’re not too picky about playing games at larger resolutions on the highest settings, it’s a solid card. But its timing makes it a potentially risky one. Nvidia hasn’t unveiled any card yet this generation; and when AMD unveils the inhabitants of the 7800 series that will undoubtedly fill out key segments of the $200-$400 price spectrum, a new card could easily turn out superior speed with just a minor markup. If money is your deal-breaking concern, the best way to maximize your buying power could be just to wait for a more clear-cut sub-$200 champion to emerge.

Matthew Murray got his humble start leading a technology-sensitive life in elementary school, where he struggled to satisfy his ravenous hunger for computers, computer games, and writing book reports in Integer BASIC. He earned his B.A. in Dramatic Writing at Western Washington University, where he also minored in Web design and German. He has been building computers for himself and others for more than 20 years, and he spent several years working in IT and helpdesk capacities before escaping into the far more exciting world...
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